Axel Lohm was in the hall, having his coat taken from him by a servant.
"You here?" exclaimed Anna, holding out both hands. She was more than
usually pleased to see him.
"Manske had a pile of letters for you, and could not get them to you
because he has a pastors' conference at his house. I was there and saw
the letters, and thought you might want them."
"Oh, I don't want them--at least, there is no hurry. But the letters are
only an excuse. Now isn't it so?"
"An excuse?" he repeated, flushing.
"You want to see the new arrivals."
"Not in the very least."
"Oh, oh! But as you have come one minute too soon, and happened to meet
me outside the door, your plan is spoilt. Are those the letters? What a
pile!" Her face fell.
"But you are looking for nine more ladies. You want a wide choice. You
have still the greater part of your work before you."
"I know. Why do you tell me that?"
"Because you do not seem pleased to get them."
"Oh yes, I am; but I am tired to-night, and the idea of nine more ladies
makes me feel--feel sleepy."
She stood under the lamp, holding the packet loosely by its string and
smiling up to him. There were shadows in her eyes, he thought, where he
was used to seeing two cheerful little lights shining, and a faint
ruefulness in the smile.
"Well, if you are tired you must go to bed," he said, in such a matter
of fact tone that they both laughed.
"No, I mustn't," said Anna; "I am on my way to Herr Dellwig at this very
moment. He's in there," she said, with a motion of her head towards the
dining-room door. "Tell me," she added, lowering her voice, "have you
got a brick-kiln at Lohm?"
"A brick-kiln? No. Why do you want to know?"
"But why haven't you got a brick-kiln?"
"Because there is nothing to make bricks with. Lohm is almost entirely
sand."
"He says there is splendid clay here in one part, and wants to build
one."
"Who? Dellwig?"
"Sh--sh."
"Your uncle would have built one long ago if there really had been clay.
I must look at the place he means. I cannot remember any such place. And
it is unlikely that it should be as he says. Pray do not agree to any
propositions of the kind hastily."
"It would cost heaps to set it going, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, and probably bring in nothing at all."
"But he tries to make out that it would be quite cheap. He says the
timber could all be got out of the forest. I can't bear the thought of
cutting down a lot of trees."
"If you can't bear the thought of anything he proposes, then simply
refuse to consider it."
"But he talks and talks till it really seems that he is right. He told
me just now that it would double the value of the estate."
"I don't believe it."
"If I made bricks, according to him I could take in twice as many poor
ladies."
"I believe you will be happier with fewer ladies and no bricks," said
Axel with great positiveness.
Anna stood thinking. Her eyes were fixed on the tip of the finger she
had passed through the loop of string that tied the letters together,
and she watched it as the packet twisted round and round and pinched it
redder and redder. "I suppose you never wanted to be a woman," she said,
considering this phenomenon with apparent interest.
Axel laughed.
"The mere question makes you laugh," she said, looking up quickly. "I
never heard of a man who did want to. But lots of women would give
anything to be men."
"And you are one of them?"
"Yes."
He laughed again.
"You think I would make a queer little man?" she said, laughing too; but
her face became sober immediately, and with a glance at the shut
dining-room door she continued: "It is so horrid to feel weak. My sister
Susie says I am very obstinate. Perhaps I was with her, but different
people have different effects on one." She sank her voice to a whisper,
and looked at him anxiously. "You can't think what an _effort_ it is to
me to say No to that man."
"What, to Dellwig?"
"Sh--sh."
"But if that is how you feel, my dear Miss Estcourt, it is very evident
that the man must go."
"How easy it is to say that! Pray, who is to tell him to go?"
"I will, if you wish."
"If you were a woman, do you suppose you would be able to turn out an
old servant who has worked here so many years?"
"Yes, I am sure I would, if I felt that he was getting beyond my
control."
"No, you wouldn't. All sorts of things would stop you. You would
remember that your uncle specially told you to keep him on, that he has
been here ages, that he was faithful and devoted----"
"I do not believe there was much devotion."
"Oh yes, there was. The first evening he cried about dear Uncle
Joachim."
"He cried?" repeated Axel incredulously.
"He did indeed."
"It was about something else, then."
"No, he really cried about Uncle Joachim. He really loved him."
Axel looked profoundly unconvinced.
"But after all those are not the real reasons," said Anna; "they ought
to be, but they're not. The simple truth is that I am a coward, and I am
frightened--dreadfully frightened--of possible scenes." And she looked
at him and laughed ruefully. "There--you see what it is to be a woman.
If I were a man, how easy things would be. Please consider the
mortification of knowing that if he persuades long enough I shall give
in, against my better judgment. He has the strongest will I think I ever
came across."
"But you have not yet given in, I hope, on any point of importance?"
"Up to now I have managed to say No to everything I don't want to do.
But you would laugh if you knew what those Nos cost me. Why cannot the
place go on as it was? I am perfectly satisfied. But hardly a day passes
without some wonderful new plan being laid before me, and he talks--oh,
how he talks! I believe he would convince even you."
"The man is quite beyond your control," said Axel in a voice of anger;
and voices of anger commonly being loud voices, this one produced the
effect of three doors being simultaneously opened: the door leading to
the servants' quarters, through which Marie looked and vanished again,
retreating to the kitchen to talk prophetically of weddings; the
dining-room door, behind which Dellwig had grown more and more impatient
at being kept waiting so long; and the drawing-room door, on the other
side of which the baroness had been lingering for some moments, desiring
to go upstairs for her scissors, but hesitating to interrupt Anna's
business with the inspector, whose voice she thought it was that she
heard.
The baroness shut her door again immediately. "_Aha_--the admirer!" she
said to herself; and went back quickly to her seat. "The Miss is talking
to a _jünge Herr_," she announced, her eyes wider open than ever.
"A _jünge Herr_?" echoed Frau von Treumann. "I thought the inspector was
old?"
"It must be Axel Lohm," said the princess, not raising her eyes from her
work. "He often comes in."
"He comes courting, evidently," said the baroness with a sub-acid smile.
"It has not been evident to me," said the princess coldly.
"I thought it looked like it," said the baroness, with more meekness.
"Is that the Lohm who was engaged to one of the Kiederfels girls some
years ago?" asked Frau von Treumann.
"Yes, and she died."
"But did he not marry soon afterwards? I heard he married."
"That was the second brother. This one is the eldest, and lives next to
us, and is single."
Frau von Treumann was silent for a moment. Then she said blandly, "Now
confess, princess, that _he_ is the perilous person from whom you think
it necessary to defend Miss Estcourt."
"Oh no," said the princess with equal blandness; "I have no fears about
him."
"What, is he too possessed of an invulnerable heart?"
"I know nothing of his heart. I said, I believe, adventurers. And no one
could call Axel Lohm an adventurer. I was thinking of men who have run
through all their own and all their relations' money in betting and
gambling, and who want a wife who will pay their debts."
"_Ach so_," said Frau von Treumann with perfect urbanity. And if this
talk about protecting Miss Estcourt from adventurers in a place where
there were apparently no human beings of any kind, but only trees and
marshes, might seem to a bystander to be foolishness, to the speakers it
was luminousness itself, and in no way increased their love for each
other.
Meanwhile Dellwig, looking through the door and seeing Lohm, brought his
heels together and bowed with his customary exaggeration. "I beg a
thousand times pardon," he said; "I thought the gracious Miss was
engaged and would not return, and I was about to go home."
"I have found the paper, and am coming," said Anna coldly. "Well,
good-night," she added in English, holding out her hand to Axel.
"If you will allow me, I should like to pay my respects to Princess
Ludwig before I go," he said, thinking thus to see her later.
"Ah! wasn't I right?" she said, smiling. "You are determined to look at
the new arrivals. How can a man be so inquisitive? But I will say
good-night all the same. I shall be ages with Herr Dellwig, and shall
not see you again." She shook hands with him, and went into the
dining-room, Dellwig standing aside with deep respect to let her pass.
But she turned to say something to him as he shut the door, and Axel
caught the expression of her face, the intense boredom on it, the
profound distrust of self; and he went in to the princess with an
unusually severe and determined look on his own.
Dellwig went home that night in a savage mood. "That young man," he said
to his wife, flinging his hat and coat on to a chair and himself on to a
sofa, "is thrusting himself more and more into our affairs."
"That Lohm?" she asked, rolling up her work preparatory to fetching his
evening drink.
"I had almost got the Miss to consent to the brick-kiln. She was quite
reasonable, and went out to get the plan I had made. Then she met
him--he is always hanging about."
"And then?" inquired Frau Dell wig eagerly.
"Pah--this petticoat government--having to beg and pray for the smallest
concession--it makes an honest man sick."
"She will not consent?"
"She came back as obstinate as a mule. It all had to be gone into again
from the beginning."
"She will not consent?"
"She said Lohm would look at the place and advise her."
"_Aber so was!_" cried Frau Dellwig, crimson with wrath. "Advise her?
Did you not tell her that you were her adviser?"
"You may be sure I did. I told her plainly enough, I fancy, that Lohm
had nothing to say here, and that her uncle had always listened to me.
She sat without speaking, as she generally does, not even looking at
me--I never can be sure that she is even listening."
"And then?"
"I asked her at last if she had lost confidence in me."
"And then?"
"She said _oh nein_, in her affected foreign way--in the sort of voice
that might just as well mean _oh ja_." And he imitated, with great
bitterness, Anna's way of speaking German. "Mark my words, Frau, she is
as weak as water for all her obstinacy, and the last person who talks to
her can always bring her round."
"Then you must be the last person."
"If it were not for that prig Lohm, that interfering ass, that
incomparable rhinoceros----"
"He wants to marry her, of course."
"If he marries her----" Dellwig stopped short, and stared gloomily at
his muddy boots.
"If he marries her----" repeated his wife; but she too stopped short.
They both knew well enough what would happen to them if he married her.
The building of the brick-kiln had come to be a point of honour with the
Dellwigs. Ever since Anna's arrival, their friends the neighbouring
farmers and inspectors had been congratulating them on their complete
emancipation from all manner of control; for of course a young ignorant
lady would leave the administration of her estate entirely in her
inspector's hands, confining her activities, as became a lady of birth,
to paying the bills. Dellwig had not doubted that this would be so, and
had boasted loudly and continually of the different plans he had made
and was going to carry out. The estate of which he was now practically
master was to become renowned in the province for its enterprise and the
extent, in every direction, of its operations. The brick-kiln was a
long-cherished scheme. His oldest friend and rival, the head inspector
of a place on the other side of Stralsund, had one, and had constantly
urged him to have one too; but old Joachim, without illusions as to the
quality of the clay, and by no manner of means to be talked into
disbelieving the evidence of his own eyes, would not hear of it, and
Dellwig felt there was nothing to be done in the face of that curt
refusal. The friend, triumphing in his own brick-kiln and his own more
pliable master, jeered, dug him in the ribs at the Sunday gatherings,
and talked of dependence, obedience, and restricted powers. Such friends
are difficult to endure with composure; and Dellwig, and still less his
wife, for many months past had hardly been able to bear the word "brick"
mentioned in their presence. When Anna appeared on the scene, so young,
so foreign, and so obviously foolish, Dellwig, certain now of success,
told his friend on the very first Sunday night that the brick-kiln was
now a mere matter of weeks. Always a boaster, he could not resist
boasting a little too soon. Besides, he felt very sure; and the friend,
too, had taken it for granted, when he heard of the impending young
mistress, that the thing was as good as built.
That was in March. It was now the end of April, and every Sunday the
friend inquired when the building was to be begun, and every Sunday
Dellwig said it would begin when the days grew longer. The days had
grown longer, would have grown in a few weeks to their longest, as the
friend repeatedly pointed out, and still nothing had been done. To the
many people who do not care what their neighbours think of them, the
torments of the two Dellwigs because of the unbuilt brick-kiln will be
incomprehensible. Yet these torments were so acute that in the weaker
moments immediately preceding meals they both felt that it would almost
be better to leave Kleinwalde than to stay and endure them; indeed,
before dinner, or during wakeful nights, Frau Dellwig was convinced that
it would be better to die outright. The good opinion of their
neighbours--more exactly, the envy of their neighbours--was to them the
very breath of their nostrils. In their set they must be the first, the
undisputedly luckiest, cleverest, and best off. Any position less mighty
would be unbearable. And since Anna came there had been nothing but
humiliations. First the dinner to the Manskes, from which they had been
excluded--Frau Dellwig grew hot all over at the recollection of the
Sunday gathering succeeding it; then the renovation of the _Schloss_
without the least reference to them, without the smallest asking for
advice or help; then the frequent communications with the pastor,
putting him quite out of his proper position, the confidence placed in
him, the ridiculous respect shown him, his connection with the mad
charitable scheme; and now, most dreadful of all, this obstinacy in
regard to the brick-kiln. It was becoming clear that they were fairly on
the way to being pitied by the neighbours. Pitied! Horrid thought. The
great thing in life was to be so situated that you can pity others. But
to be pitied yourself? Oh, thrice-accursed folly of old Joachim, to
leave Kleinwalde to a woman! Frau Dellwig could not sleep that night for
hating Anna. She lay awake staring into the darkness with hot eyes, and
hating her with a heartiness that would have petrified that unconscious
young woman as she sat about a stone's throw off in her bedroom,
motionless in the chair into which she had dropped on first coming
upstairs, too tired even to undress, after her long struggle with Frau
Dellwig's husband. "The _Engländerin_ will ruin us!" cried Frau Dellwig
suddenly, unable to hate in silence any longer.
"_Wie? Was?_" exclaimed Dellwig, who had dozed off, and was startled.
"She will--she will!" cried his wife.
"Will what? Ruin us? The _Engländerin_? _Ach was--Unsinn._ _She_ can be
managed. It is Lohm who is the danger. It is Lohm who will ruin us. If
we could get rid of him----"
"_Ach Gott_, if he would die!" exclaimed Frau Dellwig, with fervent
hands raised heavenwards. "_Ach Gott_, if he would only die!"
"_Ach Gott, ach Gott!_" mimicked her husband irritably, for he disliked
being suddenly awakened. "People never die when anything depends on it,"
he grumbled, turning over on his side. And he cursed Axel several times,
and went to sleep.